Functional purpose of pause screen on activity swap

Slarow
Slarow Posts: 204 Tile Toppler
edited November 2015 in MPQ General Discussion
At least on Android, now when you swap activities and come back to MPQ, you are looking at the "options/retreat" pop up window, which you have to close to get back to the game.

I was wondering what the functional purpose of this feature was? I could understand if this was a live PVP game and you wanted to let the other person know that you were away from the game, or if this was an action game instead of a turn based game, and you needed to pause the game, but neither of these apply.

Someone at some point thought there would be a benefit to this feature that overrides the extra work it places on the player, I am just curious what the reasoning was on that?

Comments

  • jojeda654
    jojeda654 Posts: 1,162 Chairperson of the Boards
    Let's say you get a phone call, and once you're done, you put the phone in your pocket. If the pause screen isn't on, then it's possible for some matches to be made, and for you to take a loss. I'm wondering if enough people contacted CS about it to warrant the change.
  • TLCstormz
    TLCstormz Posts: 1,668
    THIS CHANGE IS GARBAGE.

    And the Victory flowers and sparkles was unnecessary.

    Who okays this sort of silliness?
  • JVReal
    JVReal Posts: 1,884 Chairperson of the Boards
    perhaps having it automatically pause when you switch to another app or answer the phone is the fix for those who were having the app force close whenever they received a call?
  • ZeiramMR
    ZeiramMR Posts: 1,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    With the recent integration to Play Games, that might be a requirement from Google.
  • Slarow
    Slarow Posts: 204 Tile Toppler
    jojeda654 wrote:
    Let's say you get a phone call, and once you're done, you put the phone in your pocket. If the pause screen isn't on, then it's possible for some matches to be made, and for you to take a loss. I'm wondering if enough people contacted CS about it to warrant the change.

    As far fetched as that sounds, I think it would be more likely that you now accidentally click retreat and leave the game vs accidentally making a game losing ending match.
  • madok
    madok Posts: 905 Critical Contributor
    Slarow wrote:
    As far fetched as that sounds, I think it would be more likely that you now accidentally click retreat and leave the game vs accidentally making a game losing ending match.

    That is my worry. All it takes is a little game lag or fat fingers to cause an accidental retreat.
  • BearVenger
    BearVenger Posts: 455 Mover and Shaker
    I've noticed no more flash resets of MPQ when I'm app-switching, which I did have prior to the auto-pause screen.
  • Slarow
    Slarow Posts: 204 Tile Toppler
    BearVenger wrote:
    I've noticed no more flash resets of MPQ when I'm app-switching, which I did have prior to the auto-pause screen.

    I don't think this would be affected by it, as if you look closely at mpq when you click back to it, you can see that the pause screen doesn't actually appear until after you resume the game, so it's not there when the game is in the background.
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
    Under previous versions of MPQ, activity swap often ended up with MPQ "closing" and counting any matches in progress as forfeits. That hasn't happened yet with the pause screen activating on activity swap.

    I'm using an LG G4, so I was fairly certain it could handle running MPQ and an internet browser. I'll take pause screen over lost matches any day.
  • smoq84
    smoq84 Posts: 421 Mover and Shaker
    Mawtful wrote:
    Under previous versions of MPQ, activity swap often ended up with MPQ "closing" and counting any matches in progress as forfeits. That hasn't happened yet with the pause screen activating on activity swap.
    This is also my observations. It seems that game is now more stable and doesn't close so often.
    However I would have to make some tests to make sure.
  • teknofyl
    teknofyl Posts: 80
    jojeda654 wrote:
    Let's say you get a phone call, and once you're done, you put the phone in your pocket. If the pause screen isn't on, then it's possible for some matches to be made, and for you to take a loss. I'm wondering if enough people contacted CS about it to warrant the change.

    But now it's possible for you to accidentally hit the retreat button, causing the exact same effect (a loss) with a single event (press retreat) rather than a series of events (some number of bad matches, enough to cause a loss).
  • rawfsu
    rawfsu Posts: 291 Mover and Shaker
    Personally, I like the feature. I see it as protection from MPQ just closing, which has happened to me a NUMBER of times. Also, don't you get an additional warning screen before retreating?
  • TLCstormz
    TLCstormz Posts: 1,668
    JVReal wrote:
    perhaps having it automatically pause when you switch to another app or answer the phone is the fix for those who were having the app force close whenever they received a call?

    No, because it still randomly closes itself when I switch to Facebook, when Facebook randomly updates itself, when I open up my camera, when I get a phone call, when I open up Waze, etc.
  • ammenell
    ammenell Posts: 817 Critical Contributor
    jojeda654 wrote:
    Let's say you get a phone call, and once you're done, you put the phone in your pocket. If the pause screen isn't on, then it's possible for some matches to be made, and for you to take a loss. I'm wondering if enough people contacted CS about it to warrant the change.
    im playing on android, on a s3 mini.
    if i answer a call and switch back to the game, the game handles it like a forced close and treats my chars like i retreated.

    for me, its one of the changes i ignore, like that new, shiny and useless victory screen the new intern at d3 made.

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